Users of wireless devices are becoming more dependent on the functionality provided by mobile devices as the price point drops for all-in-one devices such as phones that include, inter alia, phone, email, text messaging, internet browsing, GPS navigation, GPS tracking and music/picture/video players. Today's workers need to stay connected and reachable. Running out of power for these mobile devices is unacceptable. Users are always scrambling to plug in their devices or having to purchase and carry extra batteries. The ultimate devices are ones that can be trusted to operate for long periods of time and can provide a level of certainty that enough power will be available when needed.
Most of today's mobile devices provide battery level indicators (usually three to five “bars”). However, this does not accurately reflect how long this device will remain operational. Additionally, how long each bar lasts is different depending on whether power consuming components like disks or wi-fi are being utilized. A further complicating factor is that three bars on one device is not the same as three bars on another device.
In some systems, users can select from a list of profiles (optimized, performance, automatic, presentation, etc.). Using one of these profiles users can prolong the life of the battery by dimming the display, turning off the drive, or automatically putting the device on stand-by mode when it is not used within a certain period of time. While this technique is useful for prolonging the battery life in laptop computers, it does not define a goal time for how long the device will continue to run especially smaller battery-operated wireless devices.
Some users also buy extra batteries to ensure they can continue to operate when the current batteries run out. However, there are disadvantages to using this method. Users need to ensure that the second battery is charged when needed. Changing batteries means powering down the device before the second battery can be installed. Lastly there's the cost disadvantage of expensive batteries and challenge of misplacing the them. Others users will carry power adapters with them. However finding an appropriate sitting area close to a power adapter can be difficult, if not impossible. One can easily spot business men looking for outlets to plug their devices at airline terminals. However none of these solutions can effectively provide a method for setting a goal needed to keep the device active.
Thus, there is a need to provide an improved power management processing system which is designed to avoid the problems set forth above.